Performance comparison of enhanced Erbium-Zirconia-Yttria-Aluminum co-doped conventional erbium-doped fiber amplifiers

A new Erbium-Zirconia-Yttria-Aluminum co-doped fiber amplifier (Zr-EDFA) with improved gain and noise figure characteristics is successfully demonstrated using a newly developed Erbium-Zirconia-Yttria-Aluminum Co-Doped fiber (Zr-EDF) as the gain medium. The fiber consists of Er2O3-doped ZrO2 rich nano-crystalline particles and thus it has a high erbium doping concentration with absorption pump power around 80.0 dB/m at 980 nm. Compared to the conventional silica based Erbium-doped fiber amplifier (Si-EDFA), the gain of the proposed Zr-EDFA is more efficient especially at longer wavelength region. At input signal of −10 dBm, a flat gain of 19.5 dB is obtained for the single-pass Zr-EDFA with gain variation of less than 1 dB within a wavelength region from 1530 to 1570 nm. In double-pass configuration, the measured gain varies from 17.5 dB to 21.3 dB within the wavelength region from 1525 to 1565 nm, where the noise figure is maintained at below 10 dB. The double-pass Zr-EDFA gain is also maintained above 12 dB within a wavelength region from 1520 to 1600 nm. These results indicate that the Zr-EDFA can achieve even better flat-gain value and bandwidth as well as lower noise figure than the conventional Si-EDFA